The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook—Strategies And Tools For Building A Learning Organization

Developing a work approach that is adequate to the challenges ahead
a world moving toward new and different futureS

Getting started

“I See You”

An exchange of lore and learning (The purpose of The Fieldbook)

The five (learning) disciplines

Personal mastery

Mental models

Shared vision

Team learning

Systems thinking

How to read this book

Start anywhere. Go anywhere

Make the book your own

Do the practice

Margin icons

Why bother?

Because we want superior (economic) performance

To improve quality

For customers

For competitive advantage

For an energized, committed work force

To manage change

For the truth

Because the times demand it

Because we recognize our interdependence

Because we want it

Why bother? (A CEO’s perspective)

Ingredients for success

Moving forward

Thinking strategically about building learning organizations

The essence of “the learning organization”

New skills and capabilities

Aspiration

Reflection and conversation

Conceptualization

New awareness and sensibilities

New attitudes and beliefs

The architecture of learning organizations

Guiding ideas

Three key guiding ideas for learning organizations

The primacy of the whole

The community nature of the self

The generative power language

Theory, methods, tools

Innovations in infrastructure

Practice fields

The integrity of the architecture

Avoiding the structural “quick fix”

Preparing the soil and developing the seeds

Making meaning of new structures

Putting it all together

Balancing between triangle and the circle

Results

The implicit order

Core concepts about learning in organizations

At its essence, every organization is a product of how its member think and interact

Defining your learning organization

If I had a learning organization

Enhancing the definition

What would it bring me

Picking and refining the top five

What stand in our way

I’ll know we’re making progress if …

Designing a learning organization - first steps

Establishing the groups

Divergent thinking

Clarity

Convergent thinking

Instant priorities

Implementation

How a hospital use “First Steps” to move from “teaching” to learning

Our initial inquiry: how is teaching different from learning?

The wheel of learning

Mastering the rhythm of a learning organization

The team learning wheel

Individual styles on the learning wheel

Leadership fields

The role of senior managers

Reinventing relationships

Leverage for dissolving barriers to collaboration

Intimacy

Shared authority

Promoting a new model of relationships

Finding a partner

Opening moves (How to find an appropriate path through the five disciplines)

Pursue all five sometime during the first year

Master basic prerequisites early on

Keep a retrospective map

Entry point #1 Personal to shared vision

Entry point #2 Systems study

Entry point #3 A self-contained team

Entry point #4 Current reality (self-assessment)

Entry point #5 Starting at the top

Entry point #6 Chronic problems

Entry point #7 Infrastructure review

Entry point #8 Through a total quality effort

Entry point #9 Your own entry point

A new form of corporate planning

Personal vision

Shared vision

A map of current reality

How do we close the gap?

Choice and implementation

Systems Thinking

Strategies of systems thinking

A universal language

Supports for systems thinking

Sidebars

Systems thinking

System

Systemic Structure

What you can expect … as you practice systems thinking

There are no right answers

You won’t be able to “divide your elephant in half”

Cause and effect will not be closely related in time and space

You’ll have your cake and eat it too—but not all at once

The easiest way out will lead back in

Behavior will grow worse before it grows better

Brownie’ Lamb: Learning to see the world systematically

Starting with storytelling

The Acme story*
The four levels of a systems view

Events at Acme

Patterns of behavior

Systemic structure

Mental models

Exploring you own story

The problems is …

Telling the story

Option A: Make a list

Option B: Draw a picture

The five whys

Perspective

The first why

Steps 2,3,4,5: the successive whys

Avoiding the “fixation on events”

A real case of five whys: Sears Roebuck

The language of systems thinking: “Links” and “Loops”

How to tell the story from a loop

Reinforcing loops: when small changes become big changes

Drawing the reinforcing loop

Balancing loops: pushing stability, resisitance, and limits

Drawing the balancing loop

Delays: when thing happen … eventually

Sidebar: Archetypes

Applying an archetype

Choosing an archetype

Adding your elements to the story

Core loops of key archetypes

Archetype 1: Fixes that backfire

Archetype 2: Limits of growth

Should growth be a guiding idea for your organization?

Archetype 3: Shifting the burden

Archetype 4: Tragedy of the commons

Archetype 5: Accidental adversaries

The Archetyp Family Tree

Systems Sleuth

Clifford Security Trucks

Burson-Benson Power Tool Company

The Water of Aloyé

Enriching the Archetype

Widening and deepening

Guidelines

Looking for mental models

Adding thought bubbles

Questions to help bring out mental models

Systems redesign: “adding loops” and “breaking links”

Prototyping your implementation

Seven Steps for Breaking through organizational gridlock

Identify the original problem symptom

Map all “quick fixes”

Identify undesirable impacts (including impacts on others)

Identify fundamental solutions

Map addictive side effects of quick fixes

Find interconnections to fundamental loops

Identify high-leverage actions

Moving into computer modeling

Beyond training wheels

Systems thinking with process mapping: a natural combination

Five years of delicious adventures

The real leverage

Closing the loop on “the loops”

Where to go from here

To shared vision

To mental models and team learning

To scenario planning

To personal mastery

Personal Mastery

Strategies for developing personal mastery

A conversation within yourself

The leader as coach

What you can expect … from the practice of personal mastery

Are you and your organization ready for it?

Treating emotions respectfully

Investing in personal mastery

Rethinking traditional models of motivation

Wherever you are, start here

Exercises

Drawing forth personal vision

Preparing to do the exercise

Steps

Creating a result

Reflecting on the first vision component

Describing your personal vision

Expanding and clarifying your vision

How to be a good “drawing forth personal vision” coach

Vision for the Organization

Checklist for personal values

Steps

What I value most …

Elimination

Articulation

Paired version

Cycling back: current reality and re-vision

Loyalty to the truth

The “pinch points” of dishonesty

Removing barriers to telling the truth

Exercise

Moments of awareness

The power of choice

Innovations in infrastructure for encouraging personal mastery

A “transformation and discovery” department

New performance appraisal systems

An early-information system

Ways to test personal visions against the company’s culture

Hold regular meetings

Instilling personal mastery at Beckman Instruments

Intrapersonal Mastery

The “reactive” orientation: “the world is happening to me”

The “creative” orientation: “I create my future””

The interdependent orientation

Interpersonal mastery

What to go from here

To mental models

To shared vision

To systems thinking

Mental Models

Strategies for working with Mental Models

Reflection and inquiry

Scenarios and learning laboratories

What you can expect … in working with mental models

Practice together over time

Prepare for dealing with strong emotions

Use frustration as a source of new inquiry

Beware of excitement and unbridled action

You can create new mental models

The ladder of inference

Using the ladder of inference

The left-hand column

Choosing a problem

The right-hand column (what was said)

The left-hand column (what you were thinking)

Reflection: using your left-hand column as a resource

Risking and opportunities with “the left-hand column”

Balancing inquiry and advocacy

Protocols for balancing advocacy and inquiry

Conversational recipes

The value of recipes

Working recipes into obsolenscence

Opening lines

Bootstrapping yourself into reflection and inquiry skills

Creating scenarios

Shell’s internal consultancy

Double-loop accounting

Returning the story to the numbers

Double-loop accounting at work: a project team

Preparing for a presentation

Instilling the practice of “double-loop accounting”

Accounting as story-telling

Where to go from here

To team learning

To personal mastery

To systems thinking

Share Vision

Strategies for building shared vision

What you can expect … as you build shared vision

Designing an organization’s governing ideas

Building shared vision: how to begin

Letter to the CEO

Letter to the CEO’s partner

Strategic priorities

Where to go from here

Team Learning

Strategies for team learning

What you can expect … from team learning

Dialogue

The cauldron

Designing a dialogue session

Skillful discussion

Skillful discussion at Intel